Dear Dr. Grumpy,I say this about second opinions all the time. you can just keep going and going, and eventually you'll find somebody who will tell you what you want to hear. But that's not the real criteria.

That's just plain pathetic. Wish I'd had the example for my Gender and Medicine course, though. The US government did a study that indicates that one of the biggest barriers to healthcare in men is their refusal to seek care until the problem becomes so bad that the cost of fixing it is like 10x more than it would've been if they'd just seen the doctor when symptoms 1st appeared. This guy definitely proves their assertion. How much should we bet that he's living off disability and has Medicare/Medicaid? Ah, the joy of seeing our tax dollars at work....

I occasionally visit an online implanted defibrillator forum, where basically everyone has at least a somewhat dangerous heart condition.

A week or two ago one guy actually posted that he was having the worst chest pain in his life, trouble breathing, shooting pains down his left arm and a sense of impending doom. I know he was scared, but I just couldn't believe he took the time to go online and tell people.

>>I think he's an imbecile, maybe his veterinarian will tell him to take 5 aspirin with a shot and a beer chaser.>>

Axl: As the other, anonymous veterinarian said, I would have told him to go to the emergency room. In fact, a client once called to make sure I had a technician with me to handle the horse because she had fallen, was dizzy, had vomited, and was going to lie down in the dark because she also had a bad headache. I told her to call an ambulance, or I would. (Thank goodness her husband came home during this phone call and drove her to the hospital.)

That's the one benefit to a doc-in-the-box type joint. People with chest pain love to go there instead of the ER, to get that magic pill, of course. Then, when they are no longer to answer for themselves, the ambulance is called and they get to go to the ER like they should have in the first place.

We should have just stationed an ambulance at each one and saved a few minutes per call.

another veterinarian who would have sent this guy to the ER. I've had to call 911 twice on my own clients - one was a LOL who became deeply cyanotic and SOB while mourning the impending loss of her poodle, and one was a moron who sustained a seriously bad cat bite to the neck and was bleeding all over the floor. As to stupid phone calls - I get plenty of people who call with emergent problems and don't want to bring the animal in. I recommend an ER visit because "seems like her tongue is purple and she isn't really breathing very much," and I get "Well, I'm going to just see how she does at home, doc." You can't cure stupid.

But, tch! The ER docs keep refusing his requests for narcs, and that's just so inconvenient! Maybe next time he'll get smart and not c/o chest pain....another subjective complaint might be a quicker route to narcs. Just sayin'.

We get this stuff at the pharmacy. They call describing symptoms that point to an emergency and when you tell them to go to the ER immediately they just get mad. Darwin has a theory about these people but do to advances in medicine, the theory is not working as well.

Welcome to my whining!

This blog is entirely for entertainment purposes. All posts about patients may be fictional, or be my experience, or were submitted by a reader, or any combination of the above. Factual statements may or may not be accurate.

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